Many house cats tend to be underactive and overweight. Like people, a domestic pet cat benefits from regular exercise and an active lifestyle. Exercise is essential for a pet's physical health as it relieves stress and boredom and keeps the pet feeling healthy, satisfied, and emotionally balanced.
To induce exercise and combat boredom, a pet owner often introduces a pet toy to the environment. Pet toys are generally any object or device used to entertain a pet and are generally constructed of durable materials such as pigskin, natural rubber and latex. Pet toys can also provide exercise and can help reduce depression, which often occurs in cats when left alone while family members are away from the home.
Unfortunately, standard conventional pet toys are often mundane and frequently fail to continuously stimulate the pet. As a result, many pet cats tend to be bored after extended use of a pet toy. For example, pet toys resembling a mouse or rodent are generally passive, and as a result, are only movable through the toy being thrown by the pet owner or upon being moved by the pet itself.
Thus, there remains a long-felt and as of yet unmet need to provide a new and improved pet toy capable of entertaining a cat by eliciting or stimulating the attention of the pet. Preferably, the pet toy is simple and requires minimal human intervention and maintenance.